Navy investigators are asking for public help as they probe the death of a former Penthouse model and Caligula actress whose body washed up in San Diego County.

Authorities want to know whether anyone saw Anneka Vasta before joggers found her naked body on a Marine training beach at Camp Pendleton on January 4 this year.

The 58-year-old was discovered with a broken neck and back. She had drowned. Police are trying to establish how she got there and whether her death was a suicide.

Award: Vasta was named 1975 Penthouse Pet of the Year but had more recently divorced and suffered from paranoia

Film role: Police are mystified by the death of Anneka Vasta, who was found dead on a Camp Pendleton beach. She played Messalina in infamous movie Caligula

Former centre-fold Vasta lived a life of relative glamour in the 1970s and 80s, being named the 1975 Penthouse Pet of the Year, under the name Anneka Di Lorenzo, and appearing in Bob Guccione's infamous soft-porn film Caligula.

She later won $4million in a landmark sexual harassment suit against Penthouse publisher Guccione, whom she had dated, after he compelled her to have sex with two of his business associates.

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The Naval Criminal Investigative Service is asking if anyone recalls seeing Vasta along Interstate 5, where her car was found parked at a popular scenic overlook, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported.

Federal agents have pursued the case for nine months but are not yet able to say how Vasta got from the vantage point 60ft above sea level, to the rocky sand below, more than a mile south.

Investigators believe that if
Vasta jumped from the bluffs below her car, her body would
not have hit the water, because the tide is not high enough at the location, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported.

Unusual: Police are trying to work out how Vasta got from her car, parked on a vantage point above the beach, washed up more than a mile south despite their being no tide at the first location

Marine base: The beach where Vasta's body was washed up is a restricted area of Camp Pendleton, a marine corps base

Murder or suicide: Vasta parked her car by a vantage point 60ft over the idyllic beach, but police are trying to work out how her body came to be a mile south as there was no tide

Hollywood lifestyle: In this 1980 photo, Vasta poses with Swiss Artist H.R. Giger, who was nominated for an academy award for the movie Alien, at the opening of an exhibition in New York

Her family strongly refutes the suggestion she committed suicide and investigators have looked into whether Vasta, known as emotionally fragile, was harmed by someone she met that New Year's Eve weekend.

'The main unanswered question that we have is how she got from her vehicle to the water,' Special Agent Rachel McGranaghan told the San Diego Union-Tribune, one of two naval investigators leading the case.

'We know her life ended in the water, in some circumstance, we just don’t know how.'

Divorced and in and out of jobs, Vasta, who was born Marjorie Lee Thoreson in St Paul, Minnesota, had been living near her sister Susan Thoreson in Sherman Oaks, Los Angeles.

Ms Thoreson said her sister began
showing signs of mental problems about six or eight years ago, suffering
bouts of paranoia and anxiety, the San Diego Union-Tribune.

The former Penthouse model is believed
to have left Los Angeles in the early hours of January 2 and driven
south in a maroon 2001 Mazda 626 sedan, with many of her possessions
packed in the trunk, the paper said.

SORRY END FOR WOMAN WHO WANTED TO BE 'SEXIEST IN WORLD'

Anneka Vasta was born Marjorie Lee Thoreson in July, 1952 in St. Paul, Minnesota.

She dropped out of high school and moved to Los Angeles after her parents divorced in 1965, where she worked as a receptionist, a cocktail waitress, and a topless dancer.

She met Bob Guccione in 1973, and he agreed to make her the Pet of the Month for that September, flying her to New York, and then to London for photo shoots.

The magazine publisher got her the role of Messalina in Caligula and Vasta, then going by the surname Di Lorenzo, is quoted as saying: 'How famous do I want to be? Let's just say that I'm going to be the sexiest woman in the world.'

But her career suffered from the backlash over Caligula and her final screen role was a small part as a nurse in Brian De Palma's Dressed to Kill.

In 1988 she sued Guccione on charges of sexual harassment and he was found guilty of compelling her to have sex with two business associates.

Despite being awarded the ground-breaking damages of $4million, Vasta only won a measly $4.06 after an appeal ruled money was not recoverable and vacated the award.

Guccione struck back at her by reprinting photos of Di Lorenzo and Lori Wagner's lesbian love scene from Caligula in the February 1991 issue of Penthouse.

Just before 6am, she rented a room at the Motel 6 on Raintree Drive, near South Carlsbad State Beach but never checked out.

She drove around until 8.30am, making
calls to family and friends, the last of which was from a the vicinity
of where she parked her car.What happened after that is a mystery.

When investigators discovered the Mazda,
her phone and purse were still in it, as well as a blood-stained
leopard-print blouse and a sports bra, which was wrapped in a plastic
bag from the Motel 6, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported.

A steak knife with Vasta's blood on it was found by the passenger floorboard. Lithium and an empty
bottle of Xanax were found in the car but an
autopsy showed no drugs in the dead woman's body.

The medical examiner reported shallow
cuts on Vasta's wrists, consistent with a half-hearted suicide attempt.
She also had two stab wounds on her chest, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported.

Susan Thoreson and Vasta's two other
sisters, are convinced their sibling would not have killed herself and
are troubled by the fact her neck and back were broken while she was
still alive.

They point to the fact she spoke daily with her daughter, who attends Florida State University, and say she still had plenty to live for.

Her family believe Vasta's open nature
could have led her into trouble.

'She's like a little girl out in the
street. A stranger could walk by, and she’ll pick up a conversation with
them,' Ms Thoreson told the San Diego Union-Tribune.

Vasta played Messalina, a Roman empress,
in Caligula, which was the first major movie to feature eminent film
actors, including Helen Mirren, in explicit sex scenes.

In 1990 she won a ground-breaking victory
over Guccione for sexual harassment. A New York judge awarded her more
than $4 million, though on appeal the damages were determined to be
non-recoverable and the court vacated the award.